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I've been clearing weeds from old homesteads wrong for 10 years, a retired ranger set me straight
Took a trip out to a forgotten farmstead near Cimarron, New Mexico last month. There's this old stone foundation with a collapsed root cellar I always liked, and I used to pull up all the brush and weeds around it to get a clear photo. Thought I was helping uncover the place.
A retired park ranger was hiking by and saw me yanking out these thick juniper roots. He asked what I was doing. I said I was cleaning it up so you could actually see the structure. He just shook his head and said, "You're erasing the story. That growth is showing you where the fence line and garden beds used to be, and it takes a century of neglect to get that pattern.""
I looked at what I had already pulled and sure enough, I had torn out a clear line of wild lilac that marked where an old windbreak stood. I never even considered that the plants were part of the site's history, not just clutter.
Now I only brush away loose leaf litter and deadfall. I leave the living stuff alone and look for patterns before I move anything. Has anyone else had a moment where they realized they were messing up a site by trying to make it look "clean" for photos?
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wyatt_green4d ago
Guessing the ranger saved you from starting a one man war on a hundred year old bush. I did the same thing at a spot in Utah, yanked out a bunch of sagebrush to get a clean shot and later found out it was growing in a perfect rectangle from some old sheep pen. Now I just take the photo with the weeds in it and call it ambiance.
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